


lay where you're laying (don't make a sound)

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Bartender!Zayn, M/M, and nick is drunk, animator!louis, karaoke bar au, larry stylinson - Freeform, shy!harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:27:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis happens to sort of hate his job, Zayn happens to sort of hate the world, and Harry just sort of happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lay where you're laying (don't make a sound)

**Author's Note:**

> so i wanted to give you guys something since i haven’t posted anything in two months and i’m going to italy tomorrow and the circus au is growing to a monster size
> 
> disclaimer: yeah well yadda yadda

Louis would rather be somewhere else, to be quite frank.

The karaoke bar is shady with the occasional burst of lights flashing, colours abound, deforming the faces of people dancing and screaming. And drinking. _Drinking_ and _sweating_ and all but puking, and there’s a girl squealing along falsely to some Taylor Swift song – yes, you’re never ever, no, yeah, he _gets it_.

But Louis drags a broad smile across lips, because that’s his job – and if it looks a bit too forced, only Zayn would notice.

(And, not very surprisingly, he does.)

“You alright, Lou?”

Zayn’s dark eyes glimmer with a heavy bit of worry and his brows tighten in an almost-frown.

But Louis shows him his teeth and stuffs his voice with faux excitement. “I’m marvellous, love. Splendid! Never been better!” He widens his eyes with every word, just for effect.

“Christ, stop, you creep.” His friend runs a hand through his black hair in tender amusement – but the worry’s not gone, and Louis knows it’s not. It’s like a nonverbal conversation beneath the chitchat – Louis tells him not to worry, and Zayn knows not to force it.

So Louis grins but blinks to convert his eyes back to their normal size. “Don’t pretend you don’t get off on it.”

“Gross.”

The song ends – finally, finally it ends – and Louis jumps off his stool. “Amazing!” he says in his mike, “And coming up next we have –” he picks up one of the notes sticking on the wall beside him “- the birthday boy, with LMFAO’s ‘Sexy and I Know It’!”

His announcement is followed by drunken cheers and whoops – _c’mon Nick you sexy beast go Nicky woo_ – and a tall, dark-haired man is climbing on the platform, staggering and almost tripping.

“No, it’s okay, I can – oops.” He giggles. “Yeah, yeah I’m good.” And then he starts singing, horribly off cue and vaguely resembling the sound of a braking train – but all of his friends seem to love it, applauding and screaming along.

All, except one, Louis notices. On a stool a bit to the back of the room, there’s a boy – a boy with a messy but quite lovely mob of curls and paper white skin and ridiculously large hands clutching a camera in front of his face. And it’s not like he doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself – Louis can see him smiling – it’s just that there’s something a bit off, like he’s frightened and tries to hide it, but it’s still visible in the tenseness of his shoulders and the redness of his bitten lower lip.

And then he lowers the camera –

– and jesus _christ_ , that boy is _fit_.

So naturally, Louis slides over with a smile made of spun sugar.

“Well hello there.”

“Hi,” answers the boy, looking at him curiously.

“What’re you doing here all on your own, love?” Louis watches the boy get properly flustered at the nickname with growing satisfaction – there’s a faint pink on his cheeks and a small smile on his lips and it’s all just very adorable, really.

But the boy just looks down a bit and lifts the camera. “M’taking pictures.”

“Photographer then, are you?” It would be a bit presumptuous to assume every bloke with an expensive looking camera is a photographer – but believe it or not, Louis is quite the romantic when it suits him. And maybe the boy strikes him as the artistic kind, with the hipster-y vibe he has going on.

The boy shrugs. “A bit. Sometimes.” And he has this really low, thoughtful way of speaking, like he’s being careful to pronounce every word correctly, like he sends them off with a wave and a _take care_.

It’s a bit weird, maybe. But the less the boy elaborates – the less he lets him in – the more interested Louis becomes in what he’s not telling him.

So he just gives him a pained look, because he isn’t used to interacting with people who aren’t every bit as spontaneous as he his. (Except Zayn, but that’s Zayn, and the only reason _he_ ’s a bit closed off is because he’s a sarcastic prick.)

After a moment he simply says, “I’m Louis.”

The boy’s eyes flicker back to his face. “I’m Harry.” There’s a half-smile, right there.

Harry. Harry. Maybe it fits, it does, like a warm jumper or a new shirt.

“Take one of me?”

“What?”

Louis nods at the device in Harry’s hands. “A picture. Take one of me?”

“Oh – yeah, sure.” And he clears his throat and lifts the camera back up to his face.

“Get my good side, would you?” says Louis, just as Harry squints his eyes and the flash goes off.

Harry looks down at the screen, and there are _dimples_ , and Louis doesn’t quite know what to do with himself when he notices them.

“Um. Can I see?”

“Yeah, um. Here you go,” says the boy, and he hands him the camera.

The picture looks a bit horrid, because Louis was in the middle of pronouncing the word _would_ and his quiff hasn’t quite survived the day.

“Oh god.”

When he looks at Harry the boy’s holding back a chuckle.

“I think I’m going to spare myself any near future of embarrassment and bribery and just –” His index finger is hovering over a couple of buttons of which the purposes are completely beyond his understanding. To push them or not to push them, that is the –

“No!” Harry snatches the canon from his hands, cradling it protectively, like some kind of lioness. “Nope! No pictures get deleted.”

Louis pouts. “But I look dreadful.”

“Yes.”

“Delete it.”

“Never.”

“You can take another if you want?” Louis is appealing for all his persuasive skills, but they don’t seem to have any effect.

“I might take you up on that,” smiles Harry. “But this one stays.”

And Louis sighs and reckons himself won over, because, well. For a near-stranger, this boy sure knows how to wind him around his fingers – and it may have something to do with how pretty he is, but there may be something else as well. Maybe it’s charisma, Louis thinks.

But then the song the birthday boy – Nick, is it? – was singing ends, and Louis holds up a finger at Harry – _be right back_ – and skips to where his microphone is lying next to the wall with the sticky notes.

“How wonderful! Happy birthday, by the way, mate – I hope you’re having a good one! The next song is for Jessie, ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls.” He kind of rushes it, throws in a few over-the-top happy expressions, and then goes to sit on the stool beside Harry, who’s studying him carefully.

“You don’t like your job then?” he asks.

“What?” Why would he even jump to that conclusion? “No, I do. Mostly.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“Well, you just – you seemed a bit annoyed, earlier.”

“Did I, now?” Louis frowns a bit, partly because he _may_ have been a bit annoyed, but mostly because he likes to consider himself a good actor and Harry shouldn’t even have noticed in the first place.

“Yeah.”

They listen to the Jessie girl singing for a bit, and Louis decides she’s not half bad. Which makes him wonder –

“Hey, Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you sing?”

The party has been going on for a while now, two hours maybe – long enough for the attendants to get properly pissed and Louis to be torn between mentally mocking them or just being profusely bored.

Until he got to talk to Harry, that is.

But even so, even if it’s been a couple of hours, he hasn’t seen Harry singing a song  - which is, well, kind of the point of karaoke.

And now the boy is looking down again, at his hands that are fiddling with the strap of his camera. It’s happening again, the biting of his lower lip and the tensing of his shoulders. _Uncomfortable_ , it screams. _Scared._

“I just – I don’t know. I don’t like singing in front of people, y’know? Or talking, or stuff. Makes me nervous?” It’s not a question, but it sounds like one, and when Harry speaks his gaze slowly traces up to Louis’ face. He’s not looking him straight in the eye, but it’s close, and it’s enough.

And yes. “Oh!” crows Louis, and he kind of has to hold himself back from clapping his hands, because that’s just _so_ – “You’re _shy_!”

Which, of course, makes Harry blush just a little bit more. “Um. Yeah.”

“That’s _adorable_.”

“Thank you?”

And it really, really is adorable. If the was one word to describe – yes. Adorable. Because his cheeks have dimples and a bit of a flush, and his eyes are strangely innocent in a way that will probably never be understood, and his face is just. Cherubic? Christ.

“ _Louis_.”

He feels a hard yank at his sleeve, and finds a surly Zayn looking back at him. “Hi, Zayn,” he greets.

“Don’t ‘hi Zayn’ me, you dick. I’ve been calling you for like, six years.”

“Then you should take a hint and realise I’m not interested, love,” winks Louis, because he can’t really resist.

“Gross.”

“Or so you always say, but I know you don’t _really_ think so.”

It’s a pity, thinks Louis, because Zayn’s so used to his comical genius that he barely reacts to it anymore. He needs new friends.

“Yeah well,” shrugs the grumpy boy, “Costumers are waiting, and all that. Karaoke, remember? Job. Payment. Life’s purpose. Get to it please?” And he stalks back to his designated spot behind the bar to satisfy the thirsty.

“Well. Better _get to it_ then, I s’ppose?” He returns his attention to Harry, who’s still sitting on the stool beside him and looking a bit like he doesn’t know what to look like, or what to think. “Oh, that’s Zayn, by the way. He’s not always like that though, the twat. Sometimes he even smiles!” He grins. “Wait – be right back.”

He walks over to grab his microphone and informs everyone that the next song – Yellow Submarine – will be for some guy named Ben. But before he can go back to Harry, Zayn demands him to help with the drinks because apparently thirst is a contagious disease, and to check the toilets because _what if someone’s puked_ , and to open a new vat of beer because the previous one’s probably close to empty; and Louis knows it’s payback, but what can he do?

And in between those little tasks, he announces various songs and sneaks glances at Harry, who’s staying on his seat obediently, throws him smiles when he looks up – and when he doesn’t, because seeing him frown at the little screen of his camera is really something to smile about.

“The next song is Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire – give it up for Styles, everyone!”

They do give it up for Styles.

And when Styles eventually stands up and comes to the platform, Louis notices that, well.

Styles is kind of, like. Harry.

Harry, who’s adopted the look of a deer caught in headlights – widened eyes like a painting of fear – takes one of the mikes. His hands are shaking.

It’s just so – Louis can’t help but feel for the boy. If it’d been anyone else, he’d probably find it funny, because _come on_. It’s just _singing_ , and so what if there are people watching? But, like. Harry’s expression has something so fearful and timid and Louis couldn’t laugh at him if he tried.

When their eyes meet, he mouths a _good luck_ and shoots a thumbs-up in Harry’s direction.

Harry just stares back at him. _Help me_.

(It doesn’t need to be said to bring the message across, which is rather convenient because the music has just begun to play.)

“Lay where you’re laying.”

_What._

“Don’t make a sound.”

What. Wow. Um. That’s  - really not quite what Louis was expecting to be honest? Okay, he’d heard Harry had a bit of a deep voice, but.

You see,  usually when people don’t want to sing, they’re bad at it. Louis has seen them – he sees them all the time – sitting as far away from the platform as possible, stiffening every time another song comes to an end.

But Harry.

“I know they’re watching, they’re watching.”

 _Harry_ , for a fact, is _not_ bad at singing. He’s not even just good at it – he just completely blew him away. Left him awestruck.

(And it may or may not be because Louis has a thing for music and a thing for pretty boys, but he has a major thing for pretty boys with musical talents all the same.)

So he just gapes a bit, his jaw not actually hanging to the floor – no, no really, it isn’t – and feels Harry’s voice in his pores, feels it drum in his veins. It’s a bit like molten chocolate, maybe – seventy-five per cent cocoa, all dark and sweet with an edge, and _hot_.

“Soft lips are open, knuckles are pale. Feels like you’re dying. You’re dying.”

If it does – feel like dying, he means – he reckons it wouldn’t be that bad after all.

The song ends far, far too quickly for Louis’ liking – but when it does, Harry sort of awkwardly smiles and turns to put the microphone down – almost drops it, too. And his friends are whooping and clapping and it just makes Harry blush even more.

The slurring of boy with the paper crown on his head – Nick, the birthday boy – is the loudest.

“I don’t even know why we take you to these anymore, Harry! You’re so. You’re soooooooo –” There’s a pause. “I forgot.” He turns to the bloke beside him. “I forgot. What was I saying? You’re so – rockstar, Harry! Yeah, that’s what.”

Yeah. That’s what.

And like it was nothing, Harry just gives him a small smile, and hurries back to his stool. When Louis looks again, after announcing the next song, Harry has his camera securely in front of his face – and yet Louis can still see the flush on his cheeks.

He wants to pinch them, or maybe lick them, or.

After that, Louis doesn’t really get a chance to talk to Harry again. Another group of people has found its way to the bar, and they need drinks, of course, and entertainment. So Louis hurries back and forth and back again with platters and piled glasses and tries not to lose his balance and spill the alcohol on the stone floor – because guess who’d have to clean it up if he did?

Yeah.

And in between his playing waiter he calls out one song after another, all sung by different people and sometimes the same – but never Harry.

It’s probably because his friends know that he’s not comfortable with singing in front of them, which is, like, really nice and considerable of them. And Harry seems to think so as well, because whenever Louis looks at him –

(which is not a lot, no, he has a job to do, you know)

(it’s a lot)

– he seems to be more relaxed than he was before, one arm slumped over the shinily polished bar and the other still clutching the camera, but the white of his knuckles is gone now.

And it’s all good, yada yada.

It’s just. That.

(Louis gets more anxious by the second because Harry’s not going to sing anymore is he no he’s not it’s over he _won’t sing_ he won’t fucking sing and he’s so damn happy about it and Louis doesn’t doesn’t isn’t but he wants wants wants everything wants to see wants hear wants to feel it –)

And, like. He knows he shouldn’t and he knows he’s a bad person and yes, he’s selfish, but he just can’t help himself.

The next time he grabs his microphone he grabs a piece of paper from the wall, doesn’t read what’s written on it, and says, “And now for the next song, we have Harry with Arctic Monkey’s 505!”

As soon as he sees Harry’s face fall from semi-interested to shock to fright, he feels guilty, but. It’s for the greater good, he tells himself, biting his lower lip. It’s because the world needs to hear that voice sing again, it, like. It may bear the key to world peace or some shit.

But other than guilty, he feels a seed of satisfaction that grows when Harry walks up to the platform and grows when he takes a mike and grows and grows until he has to suppress the arising smile in order not to seem too loony.

And there’s that look again, green eyes (they’re green, wow, that’s?) boring straight into his – _help me_ – and Harry starts to sing.

Yeah.

Yep.

(It’s marvellous.)

Louis revels in how Harry’s voice rounds the low notes and roughens the high ones, how it softens and raises and ravishes –

“Louis.”

He turns. “Yeah?”

“You made him go up there didn’t you?” says Zayn, and it’s not as much a question as it is an accusation.

“It’s kind of my job to make people go up there, innit?”

Zayn raises an eyebrow.

Louis raises one back at him.

Zayn stares.

Louis stares.

(It’s just bad luck, because Louis usually is pretty good at this eye-battling stuff, but he swears Zayn can stare at things for three hours without blinking, if he wants too. Louis _really_ needs new friends.)

He surrenders. “I surrender! Fine!”

And Zayn – stupid brat that he is – breaks into a smile with crescent-shaped eyes and Louis crosses his arms over his chest and glares partly because he knows he can’t _not_ humour that smile and partly because Zayn’s distracting him from Harry’s singing.

“So, why’d you do it?”

“How’d you find out?”

“Christ, Louis. You sing Arctic Monkeys in your sleep.”

“D’not,” mutters Louis. He never noticed, anyway.

“Yeah, well. So?”

“What?”

“Why.”

“Fuck’s sake Zayn. Have you even _heard_ the guy sing? He’s got, like, and angel voice or some metaphoric shit.”

“You like him.”

And that’s Zayn for you.

“I said one sentence – one.”

Zayn grins. “I can smell it.”

“Literally. One.”

“You _fancy_ him!”

“You’re being way too invasive, Zayn. Personal space, jesus, ever heard of it?”

“Says the dickhead who crawls into my bed every single fucking night. I haven’t had a proper wank for _weeks_ – ”

“I’m going to discretely let this conversation come to a natural stop.”

“You’re so getting laid.”

“Stop. Conversing. With me.”

Zayn’s a horribly sarcastic and grumpy boy sometimes – usually – but he has his moments. And Louis doesn’t know what despairs him most.

“In my imagination you’re waiting, lying on your side, with your hands between your thighs and a smile.”

Harry’s song’s ended – and Louis could beat himself up for missing most of it. Or Zayn, for making him.

So, of course, he makes him sing another song. And another. And – yeah.

And of course other people sing too, since Louis can’t exactly have one person singing the entire night, although that’d be – rather nice. Rather. But he can’t, dammit, so he just lets Harry sing about a third of the following songs.

He enjoys thinking up songs that’d fit Harry’s voice – Little Lion Man, Half the World Away, Viva la Vida, Under the Bridge, Mr Brightside, and more, quite a bit more.

Louis loves it. He’s got this passion for music – wanted to be a singer once, realised it was pretty surrealistic, dropped the dream, got a job in a shitty karaoke bar instead – and it causes like, this intense pleasure, it relaxes him, it cheers him up, it brings him down, it’s kind of one of the biggest constants in his life.

And what Harry sings, that’s – _that’s_ music, and it’s not about how pretty he is or how adorably shy or _anything_ at all really, except the way his voice curls around the words he sings.

It’s a bit amazing, yeah. It’s a big bit of wonderful, and Louis thinks he may be a little in love.

When he gets to talk to Harry again, the boy has a shine of sweat on his forehead and his blush has extended to his neck. He looks so self-conscious Louis wants to put him in a matchbox and keep him in his pocket to hide him from the world.

And then he remembers it’s all sort of his fault, and he feels bad, but decides to swallow the guilt down to let it brew in his stomach.

“Hi,” says Louis.

“Hi,” says Harry. He’s sitting on his stool, his hands gripping the seat so tight his hands have lost their colour and his camera momentarily forgotten on the bar.

“You alright?”

“Um.”

“You’re not.”

“Not really.”

“You sing good though, Harry – it was great!” He gives him a slap – or more like a little pat – on his shoulder, but it just makes Harry curl into himself even more.

“I don’t, um. Let’s just. Talk about something else?”

Louis frowns, because he wants Harry to accept his compliments and smile and. Dimples. “Sure, mate. Tell me – you’re in uni, right?”

“Yeah. I’m studying law.”

“Law? You’re studying _law_?”

Harry chuckles at his overly disgusted tone, which is what Louis was aiming for. “Hey, now. I’m going to be a successful lawyer and earn bathtubs full of money.”

“But law’s so _boring_. Be a rockstar, Harry Styles! Be a proper rockstar and earn swimming pools of money instead.”

The boy bites his lip and looks down and clearly wishes he could sink into the ground and stay there for the rest of his life.

“Sorry. I’ll – uh. I’ll shut up now.”

Harry’s eyes snap back to his. “No, no – um, it’s okay, really. I’m just not – yeah.”

And suddenly it makes Louis feel so _frustrated_ , because he can feel Harry being smothered by insecurities, like a thick layer of stickiness creeping everywhere around him and inside him and it’s pointless because he’s got not one reason to _be_ insecure.

The worst thing is that he just waves away compliments, doesn’t even give them a second thought, because he simply doesn’t believe them – and Louis has the urge to put his hands on either side of Harry’s gorgeous face and jolt him and aggressively scream flattery at him until it gets through that thick skull of his –

But Louis has more insight in human nature. Really, he does.

So he does this really daring and dauntless thing – he lifts one hand from where it was laying in his lap and reaches, until it touches Harry’s. And he starts drawing patterns on his skin – complicated, curving, it’s almost a pity they’re not actually visible.

And in their touch there’s no understanding, not really, but comfort – and in that moment, that’s enough.

Louis has never hated his job more than when yet another song comes to its spectacular (not really) end and he has to all but tear himself away from his stool. And, no less important, from Harry.

Harry, who’s gazing up at him with big and pleading eyes and is looking more distraught than Louis has ever seen a person do about a silly thing like this – but yes, to Harry this isn’t silly at all, and Louis doesn’t really know what to do about it –

So he kisses him right on the mouth. Naturally.

It’s only a short peck, really, and everything else in the shady bar is just a watery continuum of drunkenness and noise and making fools out of themselves.

But Harry – Harry smiles.

And Louis smiles back, broad and unabashed.

And he goes to announce the next song, surprises himself with how soft his voice sounds, doesn’t even think about calling Harry up to the platform again, skips back to where the curly-haired boy is sitting.

And pecks him on the lips again.

It’s just so _nice_. Again and again and again until their lips don’t even part anymore and in Louis’ head it’s a chant of _moremoremore_ and _Harry_ and he quite likes how Harry tries not to smile into the kiss. It makes Louis feel so giddy inside and it’s new and great and he kitten-licks over Harry’s closed lips.

The boy’s shoulders aren’t tense anymore, and his knuckles aren’t white where they linger on Louis’ neck and his eyes. Well.

(Louis can’t see them because they’re closed. But he sees them later –

And later, Harry’s eyes are soft and vibrant all the same and all at once and.

Later, Louis whispers, “Hi.”

“You made me sing all those songs, didn’t you?” half-smiles Harry, like he can’t bring himself to mind, not now.

“No,” Louis says, and he’s not _really_ feeling guilty. It’s rather funny to see Harry look so torn between indignation and amusement.

He kisses it away.)

Harry takes a lot of pictures – good ones, awful ones – and Louis still tries to delete them, sometimes. Yet he never does.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [lewdis](http://lewdis.tumblr.com)
> 
> shittyendingiknowandimsorry
> 
> it'd be really really lovely to come home from italy to some nice messages wow subtle hint (pls)


End file.
